


Inconsistencies and Invalidities

by PrincessFawna



Category: Persona 2
Genre: Character Thinking, M/M, Second person point-of-view, Throwing ideas at a wall and seeing if they stick, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 23:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11770812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessFawna/pseuds/PrincessFawna
Summary: Just how much power did rumors have?





	Inconsistencies and Invalidities

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if there’s any inaccuracies here, I just was writing and let ideas flow. I’ve been struggling with writing recently so letting myself go and just writing was very helpful.

You only realized retrospectively that it was rumors that made you who you are.

Well, not _completely_.  After that fateful night at the shrine you had always been a bit of a delinquent.  Even before then you had shown the signs of disobedience and toughness—as much as a child could, at least.  It was just how you were, but it had certainly grown worse after the fire.  You had trouble seeing the point of school and of the world around you when you had lost all of your friends.  When you had been left bleeding out on the ground as one of the people most precious to you suffered, her screams engraved on your mind and seared into your ears, as fresh as if they were still happening.  You had always been a quiet boy, but after that you only became quieter.

But, how did you know if the rumors had exacerbated that?  Made you different than from how you would have been without their influence?

Alongside your self-imposed isolation, another aspect of your character that could have been affected by the rumors was your mechanical skills.  You had always loved engines, that was indisputable.  You had imitated them as a kid, then got your hands on your own as soon as you were old enough to.  You hadn’t really known too much at first, had assumed that you were just a quick learner, but upon reflection you realized that that wasn’t quite the case.  No, it was the whispers of your classmates that had suddenly increased your knowledge and steadied your fingers.

_That Tatsuya, he's good with machines isn't he?_

A rumor, spreading softly through the school.

_Yeah, that guy is a rebel, he likes his bike more than he likes people._

You were a loner, they said.  You were good with machines.  You were an intimidating silent delinquent as far as anyone knew, even before high school.  The rumors around you had only increased as you grew up.

You wondered if your silent nature wasn't entirely voluntary.  Were you friendlier before the rumors?  Before the shrine you were, a bit, but the memories were fuzzy and vague.  Maybe it was just because you had close friends with you during that summer, so you hadn’t felt as alone as before.  Even as you tried to grasp at the memories for details, though, the past faded away, disintegrating into smoke, and you thought:  _ah, rumors do change reality, don’t they?_ It wasn’t a stretch to think that they could change the past—change _your_ past.  Memories couldn’t be trusted anymore.

_Click_.  You flicked open the lighter.  _Clack_.  Shut.

You had seen rumors change people’s backgrounds before.  Hell, _you’ve_ spread rumors to do exactly that.  You’ve seen rumors make shopkeepers suddenly have illicit inventory when they had truly not done anything questionable in their entire lives.  You had seen rumors birth monsters out of whispers and change the layout of entire buildings suddenly without explanation.  There was very little that was impossible for a rumor to accomplish.  All rumors required was belief, the right mouths to utter them, the right ears to listen, and the right amount of coin greasing the right palms.

There was nothing they couldn't do.  A city could fly on rumor alone.

And you couldn’t help but wonder, just how affected were you?

_Did you hear?  Suou-senpai apparently beat up like twelve guys in middle school by himself!  Most of them went to the hospital and the rest had to run away!_

_Oh wow, really?  I’m not even surprised…he is kinda scary looking.  No wonder he doesn’t come to school much, he’s just one of those people…_

_Sssh!  Be quiet!  You don’t want anyone hearing you and telling him!_

The memories of that incident were hazy, just like everything else, but they were there, lurking.  You remembered being afraid.  Of not wanting to hurt anyone.  Of being scared that you had killed them.  Luckily, they had only been hurt.  It had still been awful.

_You know what else though?  I heard that he might have set that fire all those years ago, at the shrine nearby._

_Really?!  Didn’t a girl die in that fire?_

_Yeah, apparently her ghost still haunts the shrine too._

Jun had thought that.  This rumor was, by far, the most damning to you.  That people could even say that and believe it was...awful.  It was one of the many reasons why you avoided human interaction.  Every time you heard even a hint of it you felt your spine stiffen and ice crystallize in your mind.  Brittle and cracking, it made you withdraw.

With the ice, there was always a contradictory flash of heat.  A cracking of flame, a sudden ache in your back where the scar was.  Breathing became difficult from remembered pain and recollections of smoke-clogged air.

_How is he like that?  Is he a psychopath?!_

_Apparently his dad got discharged from the police for standing up to the yakuza or something.  He didn’t know when he should step down and wait for higher-ups.  Something similar has to be up with him, he thinks he can do anything he wants himself, and having a family reputation like that certainly doesn’t help any._

_People like that shouldn’t be in this school, they should go to Cuss._

_His brother was an alumni, I think that’s the only reason he’s still here._

It was like they didn’t notice you, the rumors were so easy to overhear.  And now you knew that rumors became reality, so…how much of any of this was real?  Did reality even matter anymore when fantasy could so easily be twisted into truth?

The thought nagged like an itch—how much had rumors affected you?

How much had they affected other people?  There had been rumors about Eikichi whispered in the halls of Sevens, and rumors about Lisa too.  (Although, there was a limitation there—no matter how much they whispered she still never spoke English, so perhaps not _every_ rumor was infallible, not even the most popular ones.  That was a calming thought, that Lisa perhaps, was still indisputably herself, despite rumors).  You wondered how many other people you knew had been altered by rumors.  Did Maya have rumors about her?  Was that, perhaps, something that contributed to her persistence with her job?  What about Yuki?  And Jun—

Oh, out of anyone, Jun certainly had it the worst.  Even if you were affected too, even if your own character had been significantly changed due to how the people around you perceived you—Jun still had it far worse.  He had false memories and rumors and who-knew-what-else from that ‘father’ of his.  But at least he was freed of that now, able to choose for himself and tear off the Joker mask.

But, with the freedom, there was hurt.  You could see it, a deep scar engraved upon Jun's psyche. Guilt and self-hatred gnawed at him, burrowing into his skin and weighing down his heart.  You wanted to say something, to reach out and _fix_ it, but people weren’t as simple as machines.  They couldn’t be repaired with spare parts, swapped out and interchanged with ease.  A damaged person had to heal, and healing took time and care and so many other unknowable elements.  Even if you tried, even if you weren’t paralyzed at the idea of trying, you weren’t sure if you could even be of any help at all.  It made you feel frustrated and useless, Jun had been manipulated and hurt by rumors and evil but you couldn’t do anything except keep pushing forward.  There could be time to heal after the world was saved.

_Click.  Clack._

You weren’t good with words.  You had never been, even in your memories (the intrusive thought, again, were they false?).  Action was more your forte, and even in that you were slow and often difficult to comprehend.  The people who mattered most always had an understanding of you, all of the friends you had known in that summer.

You still wanted to reach out though, to really say what you thought, to reassure Jun.  You could see that he thought he was deserving of hatred, that he thought that maybe even you hated him.  If you could just speak, maybe words would be powerful enough to ward that away.  Even when he looked at you, _“I’m okay Tatsuya”_ , even then, you felt like it wasn’t enough.

Rumors had corrupted Jun.  Rumors had affected everyone in some way, and so, if Jun was corrupted, it was only logical that you were too.  Maya had always called Jun your doppelganger, your pale companion.  Of course you were the same as him, in some form.  The rumors weren’t as harmful to you, but their effect was still something that had indisputably altered your life.  You realized that, if you had gone through what Jun had, they would have just as easily corrupted you.

Was corruption the right word then?  Was it fair to say that something that wasn’t even your own will made you unforgiveable?  That it implanted something deep within you, something that spread and poisoned, a scourge from the inside out?

Rumors may be reality, but you weren’t comfortable with their effect being so permanent.  So, no.  No.  Jun was not corrupted forever.  The roots of what the rumors had done to him had been pulled out when you and the others had saved him.  Jun had suffered enough, felt repentant enough when his only sin had been to fall victim to the manipulations of a being beyond comprehension.  And, somehow, it was all too easy to see how Jun had been shaped by everything.

But, of course it was easy for you to understand.  You were his pale companion too.

And so, even though words had been failing you, even though you had struggled so much to express to Jun what you thought of him, when the moment arose where everything would finally fall into place, the right words were there, clear as day.  The words came out easily as if they had always been inside of you.  It was simple.

"He only did what I would have."

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully I’ll write something a bit longer and more comprehensive for this fandom someday.


End file.
